Stem cell agency revises grant system after criticism

SACRAMENTO The governing board of California's stem cell funding agency has voted to overhaul how it distributes scientific grants after critics raised concerns that too many board members represent institutions that have won funding.

The final proposal is expected to be decided by a vote on March 13, and if accepted would bar California Institute for Regenerative Medicine board members associated with grant-eligible institutions from voting on where the money goes.

Thirteen of the 29 board members are associated with schools that receive grants.

Repeated independent reviews of the agency, including one by the Institute of Medicine released in December, have found that its board is rife with conflicts of interest. In fact, of the $1.7 billion that the agency has awarded so far, about 90 percent has gone to research institutions with ties to people sitting on the board, according to an analysis by David Jensen at the California Stem Cell Report, which closely follows the agency's operations.

“The kind of conflicts that exist now are very direct and very major,” Howard Shapiro, a Princeton professor and chairman of the panel at the Institute of Medicine, warned the board at its meeting in December.

The sums expended in California for stem cell research have been unprecedented: No other state has spent so much on stem cell research, so quickly.

But it will be years, if not decades, before taxpayers know if their money – a total of $6 billion when the agency's bonds are repaid – has resulted in new treatments.

But the money has transformed stem cell research in California and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the state's universities, including UC Irvine.

Before the passage of Proposition 71, which allocated $3 billion from California taxpayers to stem cell researchers in the hope of discovering promising new cures, UC Irvine had fewer than 10 stem cell scientists who received about $1.5 million in funding each year.

Now, after receiving $100 million in grants from the state agency, the university has 60 scientists working to advance stem cell research and teaching.

It touts itself as one of the top stem cell research centers in the world. In 2010, it opened an $80 million four-story stem cell research center with the agency picking up $27 million of the cost.

As UC Irvine has won increasing amounts of taxpayer money, its two professors who sit on the agency's board have risen in status on campus.

Professor Susan Bryant, an expert in regenerative medicine, was dean of the School of Biological Sciences when she was named to the agency's board in 2004. She was then promoted to vice chancellor of research. In July, she was named the university's interim executive vice chancellor and provost, its second most powerful administrator.

Professor Oswald Steward, a stem cell scientist, was director of UCI's Reeve-Irvine Research Center for Spinal Injury when he was named to the stem cell board. Since then, the scientists working in his center have received millions of dollars in grants from the agency. In May, the university rewarded Steward with an additional title: senior associate dean of research for the School of Medicine.

Board members don't vote on the grant proposals submitted by their own institutions.

But the agency's critics have repeatedly pointed out that the employees of the research institutions sitting on the board have an indirect conflict of interest.

The critics worry that these board members may not be objective in their agency work knowing that a promotion could be in store.

“Their careers at UC are helped by bringing money in,” Marcy Darnovsky of the Berkeley Center for Genetics and Society, told the Register last year. “To us, it seemed an unfortunate part of the agency's governance mechanism.”

The stem cell agency has so far doled out more than $1 billion to some five dozen universities. Most of that money has funded new buildings and basic research.

Jonathan Thomas, chairman of the governing board, said the new funding rules will help move the agency past these conflict-of-interest concerns.

Register staff writer Melody Petersen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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